Rebecca drew from her cigarette and exhaled, silent for a short time, a sheepish look on her face that she was glad Eerie couldn’t see. The changeling had always represented a particular challenge for her, in that everything to do with her was unprecedented. The Academy hadn’t had a changeling student in two decades before Eerie, and the longest previous stay was about four years. According to the notes she’d read, no serious effort had been made to understand or integrate the previous changelings with the other students. However, one of the things people never understood about empathy was that it was a two-way street — and Rebecca already had private reasons to sympathize with Eerie.
“Yeah,” she said, eventually. “That was bad. I’m sorry. I won’t do that again.”
“You didn’t have permission,” Eerie scolded. “That isn’t like you.”
“Hey, who’s in trouble here?”
“Right, sorry,” Eerie mumbled, returning her attention to braiding.
Rebecca decided to finish her cigarette before moving on. Eerie was comfortable with silence, she knew from years of familiarity, and would let it continue as long as Rebecca allowed. It would help calm the girl down, as would the process of braiding her hair, and Rebecca wanted her calm before they moved on. Another incident like the last and Gaul would take on the task of punishing the girl himself, and Rebecca would be unable to intervene. Moreover, Rebecca had mixed feelings on how to handle the whole situation.
Eerie wanted, on a deep and fundamental level, to be useful to the people around her. Given how casually she was dismissed by almost everyone, even the infinitely patient Michael, that desire didn’t surprise Rebecca. That was probably the reason for Eerie taking up knitting when she was thirteen. Eerie had made gloves for everyone in her class and all of the staff members she interacted with, eventually, even the kids who picked on her received gifts. Rebecca thought you could tell a lot about a person in late November, when the wind picked up and got chilly, and gloves became a necessity. Many people moved from Rebecca’s ‘good’ list to her ‘bad’ list, and vice-versa, based on their choice of cold weather gear. In fact, she was still trying to honor a personal resolution to be nicer to Gaul, since he had quietly worn the scarf Eerie had made him every day through the whole of the winter. Eerie never would say what she thought about it, but then again, she seemed to like Margot more than anyone else at the Academy, and Margot looked like a hippie every winter, she was burdened with so many handmade wool accessories.
The first time Rebecca had met Eerie, it had been in this room, the office she’d occupied for the better part of twenty years. The changeling’s mother lived on disability and food stamps in a house her parents owned in a dreadful subdivision outside of Tracy. She hadn’t asked questions or needed persuading when the Academy’s recruiters came for Eerie, she was so eager to get the child off her hands. Rebecca didn’t blame her too much. She wasn’t sure how a Fey and a human went about producing a child, but she understood that a daily reminder might not be appreciated.
An attendant had brought the little blond girl in, probably old enough for kindergarten but barely able to walk and unable to talk. Rebecca had no idea what her age actually was, because her mother seemed uncertain. She thought her to be autistic initially, but when she’d interfaced telepathically with the girl, she’d found her perfectly aware and fully cognizant, but struggling with the concept of spoken language. Beyond that, Eerie’s perceptions were so badly addled that she struggled to keep her balance or see things clearly. Rebecca’s degree was actually in child psychology, as she was late bloomer — she hadn’t been activated until she was twenty, allowing her to complete courses at UCLA before coming to Central. Moreover, Rebecca had an incident in her past that she preferred not to remember, which had led to a doomed and entirely secret premature birth during high school, Kaddish and the limitless grief of the tiny casket, six weeks in the hospital, and her parents scorn.
Rebecca had given it a name, but she couldn’t bear to remember it. She probably wouldn’t have looked anything like Eerie, Rebecca had told herself that morning, more than a decade before, studying the little girl sprawled on her office floor. Nevertheless, the girl’s wet eyes caught her, evoked the memory that Rebecca refused to acknowledge except in her worst dreams. Maybe she’d looked after Eerie a little bit more than she was supposed to.
Eerie couldn’t seem to learn to talk, but teaching her to sing was easy, and they worked backwards from there. The first few years, when she could only sing and therefore remained silent in public were particularly difficult in terms of bullying, but Eerie hung tough and got better with time. She grew more comfortable with her altered state, to the point where she could rebalance her own neural chemistry without Rebecca or Alistair’s help. While she remained a bit clumsy and near-sighted, she’d overcome most of her physical difficulties with the help of physical therapy, contact lenses and custom soles for her shoes. Rebecca had paired her with Margot, and despite the vampire’s frigid personality, a relationship had developed between them, some kind of caring. They looked out for each other if they weren’t exactly friends. Rebecca maneuvered Eerie into Gerald Windsor’s class, knowing that he was determined and compassionate enough to draw Eerie out, and that had worked too. She wasn’t a great student, but she learned enough to get by, and she was remarkable with computers. Gerald showered the girl with unreserved attention and praise, which Eerie returned in her own way: a new scarf, every winter, always an unpredictable array of colors, which made Windsor easy to pick out against the snow in December. Privately, Rebecca felt Eerie was her greatest success, as she couldn’t do much for the girl with telepathy or empathy, because the changeling’s mind remained alien and impenetrable. Rebecca had to use conventional methods.
This wasn’t to say they hadn’t had problems in the past. Eerie had gotten difficult in her early teenage years; in particular, Rebecca hadn’t caught on to the girl’s liberal attitude toward the other sex until she’d already developed a reputation. Rebecca put a stop to it quickly, and largely blamed herself — she knew, after all, that the Fey had a very different relationship with sexuality than humans did, and it should have occurred to her that Eerie might have some strange ideas. However, the rest of her classmates didn’t, and in a closed, tight community like the Academy, once a label was attached, it was very difficult to shrug off. Eerie was mortified when she understood what had happened, and they had a few challenging years. However, things had cooled off eventually. Eerie had taken up knitting, grew interested in clothes, and started dance lessons. Rebecca encouraged her self-expression to the point of letting her break the dress code. Eerie hadn’t shown much interest in boys since her early teens. Not until Alex arrived.
Figuring out how to punish Eerie was a difficult thing. Rebecca would have preferred to punish Alex, but he hadn’t really done anything other than go along with Eerie in his own dopey way. He was a teenage boy, so what else could she expect? Besides, he was Michael’s responsibility.
That easy-going jerk, Rebecca thought, with a sudden flash of intuitive jealousy, he’s probably just going to make him run extra laps. She imagined making Eerie run and had to suppress a giggle.
“I can’t let this slide, Eerie. This isn’t like when you ran off before. You took Alex, and you know that’s dangerous for him, dangerous for everybody. And Edward was killed.”
“I’m not sure that should count,” Eerie offered tentatively. “He came back.”
“That wasn’t Edward, whatever it was,” Rebecca said uncertainly. “Anyway, it definitely counts.”